Stourport-on-Severn in Worcestershire

Visit Stourport-on-Severn and the surrounding villages and stay in bed & breakfast accommodation:

Stourport-on-Severn, Worcestershire. This town owes its prosperity to a number of industries, among them carpet manufacture and the largest chain-works in Europe, and it is overshadowed by a huge power station. Nevertheless, it remains a place of pilgrimage for those who love canals. It stands where the River Stour meets the Severn, 4 miles south south west of Kidderminster. The town took on its importance from the realization of what seemed to be a dream of an illiterate farmer's son. Derbyshire-born James Brindley came to Worcestershire in 1756 with the idea of cutting a canal which would link up the navigable Rivers Trent and Severn. He proposed to end his canal at Bewdley. To their later regret, the people of Bewdley refused to cooperate. Brindley then explored this junction of the Severn and Stour. From that moment a new town came into being around the basin that linked the river with his canal. Today much of the Georgian charm of this waterway remains, with the original long red-brick warehouse with its sparkling white wooden clock tower, and at its south end the Tontine Inn opened in 1788 by the canal company. The renewed interest in canals has led to an even greater interest in Stourport. The basin has every type of inland water craft taking advantage of the 46 mile stretch of the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal up to its junction with the Trent and Mersey Canal at Great Haywood.

Across the Severn is the scattered village of Areley Kings, reached by a fine cast-iron bridge. It is famous for having been the home of Layamon. the priest who in c. 1200 wrote Brut, a poem based on a Norman-French work but written in English, giving a somewhat mythical history of Britain.

South of Stourport, towards Astley, are the Hermitage or Redstone Caves. They are made up of a whole series of chambers and cells dug into the rock and are believed to have been used by hermit monks. Bishop Latimer said of them that they could house 500 men.